Pioneering Ecumenical Declaration Serving as Benchmark for Other Churches
Episcopal News Service. November 13, 2002 [2002-261-6]
After 10 years, a landmark declaration adopted by British and Irish Anglicans and Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches is continuing to influence ecumenical development in other parts of the world, according to one of its authors, Dean John Arnold of Durham Cathedral in England.
Arnold said that the Porvoo Statement, named for the city in Finland where it was adopted in 1992 and inaugurated in 1996, has stimulated similar agreements in North America and also a unity covenant currently being considered in England by the Anglicans and the Methodists. The Porvoo statement provides for full intercommunion among the churches, including the acceptance of one another's bishops, priest and deacons without reordination. The signatories also pledged to 'regard baptized members of all our churches as members of our own.'
'Methodists in England observed Porvoo and were encouraged to try again to resume links with the Church of England,' Arnold said. 'Porvoo has influenced similar agreements in the United States and Canada, and at the international level helped to promote links between the Lutheran World Federation and the Anglican Communion.' He predicted that the next breakthrough in relations between Anglicans and Lutherans would be in Africa.